Rejecting the derogatory term "Gringos" and the accusatory epithet "Yanquis," Cubans prefer to refer to us, their North American neighbors, as "Yumas." This blog is simply one Yuma's way of sharing his thoughts on all things Cuban, a subject that often generates more heat than light.

I am pleased to invite you to join us at the Inter-American Dialogue from 8:30 to10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, August 3 for a discussion on the state of the Internet and uses of social media in Cuba today and the outlook for the future.

Larry Press, professor of information systems at California State University, and Ted Henken, professor of sociology and Latin American Studies at Baruch College, CUNY, will lead off the discussion. For more than a decade, Press has been studying the global diffusion of the internet, with an emphasis on policy and technology in developing nations. Henken has conducted research on how the use of social media and mobile technology is providing an outlet for more voices in Cuba. He plans to draw on recent interviews conducted with Cuba's diverse blogging community. Robert Guerra, director of the Internet Freedom project at Freedom House, will provide commentary. Opening remarks by our speakers will be followed by a wide-ranging exchange among participants.

OF beautiful people Cuba has many. Any visitor to the island or its satellite country, Miami, knows that.

But a classless Communist regime officially has no tolerance for privileged classes, social elites, specially anointed Beautiful People. And so even as the country moves inexorably toward the political metamorphosis that is widely predicted after the death of Fidel Castro, an image persists of a Cuba whose citizens drive vintage cars, wear faded clothes and generally inhabit the anachronistic bubble depicted in "Buena Vista Social Club."

There is another Cuba, of course. There is always another Cuba, if writers like Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, the author of the irresistibly bawdy "Dirty Havana Trilogy," can be credited. Certainly there is another Havana, the unabashedly modish and glamorous one populated by artists, models, filmmakers and writers that the photographer Michael Dweck first stumbled upon during a visit in 2009.

Cuba has a secret. One that has never been photographed, never reported in Western media and never acknowledged openly within Cuba itself.

Michael Dweck is American photographer Michael Dweckʼs exploration of a compelling aspect of Cubaʼs contradictory status in the world today. The title, like much in Cuba, has a double meaning: Free Havana and Havana is Free. This revealing and contemporary work by a visual artist adept at capturing the quiet gesture, the alluring glance and the proud and provocative pose, brings to light a secretive social order as seen from within – a position not previously attained by an outsider.

Behind the clichéd press images of vintage cars, crumbling buildings, peeling paint and a struggling unhappy people held back from progress, lays a hidden society of Cubaʼs most influential people - the creative class. It is a socially connected group of keenly observant artists, glamorous models, filmmakers, musicians and writers captured in an elaborate dance of survival and success. Their lives are a constant play of appearances; they are the privileged class in a classless society.

These Cubans are international, elegant and sophisticated. They have cars and passports in a country where travel is difficult if not impossible. They are fashionable, though Cuban couture is an oxymoron as there are few stores. They are socialists who would be lost without capitalism to sell their creative wares in the worldʼs markets. And they are the pride and flesh of Cubaʼs culture. They put their conscience on record, their art is their vision of the country.

HAVANA – Agricultural and production jobs that for decades were performed by students in Cuba during their summer vacations will not be carried out that way this year to reduce costs in line with the "updating" of the island's socialist economic model.

"It is not viable and it would not be sensible and useful to maintain" those work details in the current conditions, the official newspaper Juventud Rebelde reported on Sunday.

The paper noted that 500,000 college and high school students took part in such programs in the past.

"The most recent campaigns sent unmistakable signs: unfavorable cost-benefit correlation, falling trend in demand for labor," the daily said.

And as an aggravating circumstance, it cited "the recently sown disincentive that not even half of those committed will be called and, for those who participate, not much will be found for them to do and they will feel that it's not worth the trouble, that they are wasting time."

A member of the National Office of the Union of Communist Youth, Yoel Perez, told Juventud Rebelde that the decision "already approved and in effect to forego that entire gigantic national mobilization of forces" is designed "to do what is demanded at any given time."

"What sense would it make then to keep it up ... that process of restructuring and reordering, including the labor force, begun by Cuba to update its economic model," he emphasized.

That process includes measures such as the broadening of private labor, a massive cut in bloated public payrolls, more autonomy in the management of state companies and the elimination of unnecessary subsidies and social expenditures, among other things.

"We do not renounce the link between the student and productive and social activity," said the communist leader.

In addition, he emphasized the idea that when such work is undertaken "everyone can be, and know that they are, useful," particularly when what they are doing is being "done rationally, with indispensible human and material resources ... (and) has a concrete purpose and tangible results." EFE

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

HAVANA – The organizers of Cuba's Rotilla music festival said Wednesday that they will take legal action in response to what they describe as the Culture Ministry's "hijacking" of the annual event.

The ministry's bid to take over the running of the festival is an "act of moral violence" and a violation of intellectual property rights, Rotilla founder and executive director Michel Matos told a press conference in Havana.

In terms of telephones, the big story is the rapid growth of the use of cellphones in Cuba over the past 3-4 years (while the growth in land lines has been stagnant even as it has been gradually digitized). For example, there were just 22,600 cell phones in Cuba in 2002, while this number jumped to 152,700 by 2006, and roughly doubled each year after that hitting 330,000 in 2008, 621,200 in 2009, and toping the million mark in 2010 with 1,003,200.

Also of note is the growing chasm between the number and growth in land lines and the number and growth in active cell phones. For example, while almost all phone lines in Cuba were "fixed" (i.e., land lines) in 2001 (574,000 of 575,000), by 2010 only half of the country's more than two million (2,291,455) telephone lines were land lines (1,163,470), with most of the rest (more than a million) being cell lines.

Thus, like in many developing countries around the world, the introduction of cellular technology has been truly revolutionary, allowing places like Cuba to leapfrog into the mobile phone era.

The issue of Internet access is addressed in the chart and graphic below. Just under 60% of Cuba's 724,000 PCs are on line on one fashion or another. However, this does not mean that all or most of these "on line" computers are connected to the world wide web. In most cases, these computers have only e-mail access or are connected to Cuba's domestic Intranet, not the global web.

In terms of individual access and use of the Internet, Cuba reports 1,790,000 users out of a 11 million plus population. There are 64 PCs for every 1,000 residents (but presumable this PC number includes both individual PCs and the PCs of state entities). Finally, the report claims that there are 159 Internet users for every 1,000 residents, slightly up from 111/1,000 in 2006.

The following graphic indicates that while nearly all state entities and institutions have computers, only a little more than half possess an Intranet connection, while less than a third are connected to the world wide web.

A final area touched on by the report are Cuba's network of 606 "Joven Clubs" for computation. These JCCs are located around the country and free for users. They collectively possess 9,356 computers, employ 2,711 professors, and claim nearly 2.5 million graduates since their inception. An important issue not addressed in the report is the ease of access to these clubs (they are free, but are they easily accessible geographically, and does one have to be a member of any organization to gain access to them). A final key issue is what kind of access their computers have to the Internet.

Of course, a final issue that will be interesting to watch is whether and how these statistics on ICT and access to the Internet will change in the future when Cuba itself goes "on line" via the new broad-band cable from Venezuela (sometime later this summer).

Monday, July 18, 2011

The Bodies of the Martyrs Would Be Borne by Us / Yoani SánchezJul 18, 2011

Social processes have an often unpredictable alchemy. Although there are analysts who persist in wanting to write a universal formula for uprisings, or another for civil peace, reality is wedded to the contrary. Cuba, for example, has defied the prognostications of nearly all the optimists and exceeded the expectations of even the most hallucinatory minds.

It appears that the specialty of our country is to shatter the forecasts of Santeria priests, spiritualists and fortune-tellers. For several decades we have disappointed the predictions of our collapse and, in particular, the repeated prophecy of a popular revolt. Cubanologists of all stripes have assured us, on this or that occasion, that the the island is on the verge of fracture and that the people will throw themselves into the streets at any moment.

Instead, the sidewalks are indeed full of people, but they are standing in line to buy bread or eggs, or to submit applications to consulates to emigrate. Not even the candles lit by the Santeria priests for tranquility are upended by violence. Those of us who hope for a peaceful solution are happy because, at least to date, nobody has had to serve as cannon fodder against the anti-riot squads.

The chimerical formula of explosion foretold by some relies on the element economic strangulation to inspire a people to rise up in struggle. There are those who would like to give another turn of the screw to the United States embargo against the island and cut off all remittances that come from the outside. According to their hypothesis, Cubans caught between the rock of their needs and the hard place of an authoritarian government would choose to overthrow the latter.

I must confess that the mere mention of this theory reminds me of a bad joke: An ancient leader, being interviewed by a journalist, enumerates the signs of resistance. The autocrat relates that his people have survived the economic crisis, the lack of food, the collapse of the electrical network and the absence of public transport. As he explains each hardship in this string he appends, again and again, "and yet the people stand firm." Finally, the daring reporter interrupts him with a question, "And have you tried arsenic, Commander?"

The thesis that our reality simply needs more economic hardship for the social pressure cooker to burst is heard, oddly, most often among people who do not live in the country. The Diaz-Balart amendment to the Financial Services Appropriation Bills, recently approved by the House Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Congress, would roll back measures taken earlier this year by president Barack Obama that eased restrictions on family travel to the island and liberalized person-to-person monetary assistance. Voices in support of the amendment see these bridges as oxygen that feeds the Cuban government, prolonging its stay in power.

According to the arithmetic of "deprive them to make them react," change would be just around the corner the day the spigot of foreign aid dried up once and for all. But in the middle of that proposition, untested in practice, eleven million people, and an equal number of stomachs, would be caught. People who did not hit the streets in the devastating years of the nineties when our plates were nearly empty and our clothes hung in tatters from our emaciated frames.

During that time of endless hardship, a single popular "uprising" happened on August 5, 1994, sparked by people desperate to leave the country, not change things here. As fearful as we might be that the pressure cooker could reach the bursting point, the reality is that the vast majority would rather throw themselves into to the sea than face the repressive forces.

And it is not because a people has a genetic predisposition to bravery or cowardice, it is simply that there are a vast number of methods to confront social rebellion. Those that have already touched us are, without a doubt, efficient to the point of scientific proof.

For those political scientists who veer closer to physics than to social sciences, it would be enough to shut off the flow of remittances and travel between Cuban-Americans and the the island for something to begin to move on the national stage. In their desire to prove such a conjecture, the theory would be promulgated by them and the bodies of the martyrs would be borne by us.

Over the course of the experiment and as it moved toward its conclusion, the swimming pools of the mansions of the olive-green clad rulers would not lack their supply of chlorine, the satellite Internet of the Maximum Leader's children would not diminish a single kilobyte in bandwidth, and the brand name lingerie of so many officials would not cease to flow through back channels into the country.

Not only would this turn of the screw be unnoticed on the dining tables of the official hierarchy, but with their full bellies they would continue to rule over a people with only one obsessive thought: where to find something to eat every day. The misery that reigns in so many places would continue to be a mechanism of domination, not one of disobedience.

Watching the news that filters to us through illegal satellite TV, text messages, Twitter and email, we feel like guinea pigs in a laboratory where all decisions are made by others, far from our shores. We have the sensation of being mere numbers in a calculation as simple as it is dangerous. Where the result anticipated by the architects of the "pressure cooker theory" – that it will explode – ignores the fact that its detonation could provoke a cycle of violence that no one could know how or when it might end.

Do the Internet and social media empower Big Brother or individuals in autocratic regimes, or do they offer a rare level playing field?

This year’s Arab Spring resurrected exuberant claims for the role of new technologies in spreading democracy. At the same time self-proclaimed “cyber-realists” were quick to point out that President Mubarak’s problems seemed to grow after he unplugged the Internet. Now, summer’s deadly stalemate in Syria has given pause to anyone peddling absolute theories about the interplay between new information technologies and revolution.

If not a panacea, how can social media and the Internet be deployed to maximize civic engagement in autocratic societies? Does the U.S. policy of supporting Internet freedom amount to a policy of regime change in some countries? When Big Brother does unplug the Internet, what can, or should, the rest of us do about it?

RSVPs for today's event are closed, as we are over capacity. Please watch the live webcast, which will be available on this page, and join the conversation on Twitter: #140rev

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Q: You spend time with people who know the history, culture and quirks of the place. The most efficient way for most travelers to get the same behind-the-scenes look is to go on expensive guided tours. Is this a waste of money in your mind? Is there a better way to do it?A: "We do a lot of research before we go and we're looking for local bloggers, people who live there and have a particular interest in what I'm interested in, which is looking at the world through a food-centric view. Also, we're looking for someone with a sense of humor. Reaching out to local bloggers is always a good thing. There's somebody, chances are, who has incredible and hyper-nerdly expertise in your area of interest. If you're talking about a tour of Renaissance art in Florence, it would probably be a good idea."

"Whatever your politics, however you feel about Cuba–look at tonight's show and admit, at least, that Havana is beautiful. It is the most beautiful city of Latin America or the Caribbean. Look at the Cuban people and admit that they are proud and big hearted and funny and kind–and strong as hell, having put up with every variety of bullshit over the years. On these things, I hope we can agree."

Saturday, July 9, 2011

As a lefty progressive and a child of Cuban exiles, I've always been privy to two dominant narratives about Cuba. From family members who were forced to leave for political and economic reasons after Fidel Castro's rise to power, I have heard the very typical anti-Castro perspective of Cubans in the U.S. My family mythology was shaped by exile and loss; by the livelihood that was left behind and then torn from our fingers forever by the Cuban Revolution.

The other narrative I've encountered about Cuba has been a stark contrast to my family's personal disdain for the revolution, steeped in the palpable losses they endured. From the lefty, radical activists I associate with, I hear instead what feels like a knee-jerk and cursory support for the Cuban Revolution, sometimes simply as a way of denouncing American capitalism. That perspective always felt alienating to me, based on idolization of Che Guevara and alternative politics rather than reality.

What Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez's just-published Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth About Cuba Today provides is, finally, a third narrative. It's the only one I have come across in recent memory that is grounded in what is actually happening in Cuba today. Thanks to online technology, proxy web hosts and sheer perseverance, political bloggers such as Sánchez have thwarted the great Cuban censorship machine that tightly controls information leaving the island. Through her blog, her Twitter feed and now this book-length compilation of her posts (published by Melville House), Sánchez is finally able to communicate what it is actually like to live in Cuba today–something none of my family members and few of the radical left in this country truly understand.